A lot has happened in the last few years, and someday I may go back through and fill in the void with stories about some of these things, here in reverse chronological order, such as:

some scenic drives with the BuffaloScooby crew

my first trip to Solo Nationals in Lincoln, Nebraska

ProSolo fun in Toledo, Ohio

the vast amount of pavement at FedEx Field in DC

the Finger Lakes National Tour, and its evil rainclouds

the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania

the STS build on the li’l Honda

the SCCA Road Rally photo contest

ice racing with CNYIRA

the 2008 Northeast Division Championships at Seneca Army Depot

getting schooled at the Evo School at Devens, MA

the breakage of my Subaru, and the fact that it’s still not fixed properly

RallyCross shenanigans

a track day at Dunnville

the garage I bought, and the house that goes with it

the Finger Lakes ProSolo (2007 pictured, also 2008)

the legendary CRX, which has turned into more than I ever imagined

and maybe someday, if I’m so inclined, I’ll tell the story of the heartbreaking engine failure that caused me to stop updating this site in the first place. Or maybe I’ll just look ahead.

And I should probably update the banner, it’s missing a car!

Turns out the car was quite a bit faster than I thought it would be, and I wasn’t prepared for it! Things come up a lot faster. Also, it handles differently now, but I think we can take care of that with tire pressure changes.

I ended up in the bottom half (both in my class and overall) but I wasn’t that far behind. Next event should be better; the new tires should be in, the car will be tuned, and Cory will be driving too (so I can see what the car is really capable of… I’ve got a lot to get used to!

Results will be linked here when they are posted on the WNY site.

1. I still haven’t cleaned under the hood of the Legacy, ever.

(photo by jannygirl)

2. BuffaloScooby meet was a great time, food was good, apologies for all the FWD talk at our end of the table. I got some nice photos despite the rain.

3. Western New York autocross season starts on Sunday, and the car is almost ready. Huge thumbs-up to Cory for everything.

This was the last event in the winter rally series, Cory and Dana were the rallymasters. It was originally supposed to be in January, but it got pushed back. By the end of March there was little snow left, in fact, it had been raining all day. That may have been the reason for the relatively low turnout — for both competitors and workers. Cassie and I had planned on running, but we ended up working instead!

After a quick crash course on using the timing equipment, we were handed a pile of maps and sent on our way to checkpoint #2. You know what’s nice about working? You don’t have to go 40 MPH! A lot of the roads were familiar, and the sun didn’t set until we were almost to the halfway point.

Overall it was still a lot of fun working, we could drive faster but still had the challenges of making it to our checkpoints before the competitors, staying on course, keeping everyone’s times straight, and talking the sheriff into not ticketing anyone. Plus, I think we still had enough points to win the Novice class for the winter series.

Sorry, no pictures this time, but for the rest of the details, you can read Cory’s event report here: http://www.flr-scca.com/rally/2007/WinterEvent5-Report.html

Can’t wait until next season — but autocross starts up soon!

After our first-place finish at the last event, and with clear weather ahead, Cassie and I decided to try running in the B speed group (40 MPH instead of 36). Also, we used Increments tables to keep track of distances and times on longer legs (we had some trouble with that on the last rally). The even started at Cheap Charlie’s in Bloomfield and we had a 9 mile run to the OMP. It was still light out for the first two or three controls!

We missed a turn after the first checkpoint. The mileage may have been off, and despite the giant COUNTY ROAD 32 sign, the road wasn’t named on the route instructions — a new pet peeve of mine! We took a time allowance but we were still off by 41 hundredths, our worst leg of the whole night.

Many of the roads were familiar; the route was similar to Jake’s rally from two weeks ago. The sky was clear, the roads were dry, and the locals were few and far between. For the first time this season, we actually made it to the break on time! What a strange sight, meeting up with all the other competitors, and having time to stretch our legs!

Checking back over our leg scores we realized we were consistently early, even when the increments sheet said we were on time. This made sense, my snow tires are just slightly larger than the stock size. I tried to compensate by slowing WAY down when we saw a checkpoint, and it worked . . . we got our first zero!

The only weird thing that happened was a concerned local who warned us to stay away from the goats, “cuz they’ll shoot ya over there!” (Goats?) The rally was a little shorter than normal, I turned in the scorecard at the last control and we got back to Cheap Charlie’s with a ton of time to kill before the scores were posted.

Not only did we take first in Novice class (out of seven cars) but we placed fifth overall! Our highest finish yet. Wow! I think we’re going to get kicked out of that class pretty soon.

The next event, “Is This a Road?” will be held on March 24, and it’s the last one of the winter series. Rallymasters will be Cory and Dana in their exclusive Honda Impreza.

Link to the results: http://www.flr-scca.com/rally/2007/WinterEvent4-Results.pdf

It was supposed to be cold that morning, and it was. The course was frozen mud with a layer of ice. A few quick parade laps broke up the ice, and the 4 wheel drive group drove first. The course was different from any other time I’ve driven it; at first it was hard yet slippery, but it soon turned to mush. Melting snow turned the field into a 33 acre mud puddle.

We had fun, but ended early. I finished sixth out of twelve cars (not too shabby).

In hindsight I wonder why we stayed out there for so long . . . the course was in such horrible shape, and we were just making it worse. Not to mention the messes we made out of our cars. Mine still isn’t clean, I don’t think it ever will be again. Somehow the mud got past the weatherstripping in the front door, inside the back passenger window, the driver’s side headlight, etc.

(Results coming soon)

it’s BLEEDING!

Look what we did to the van

Nick took some sweet photos of me in action.

This is me towing a Neon

the cars . . . they all look the same!

yes, I drove it around like this for 24 hours

Brad took his first shot at navigating in George’s very photogenic Evo MR.

We got off to a good start and made it to the first few checkpoints with no problems. The roads at the beginning of the rally were mostly paved, but then we turned onto Dugway, a twisty dirt road with lots of elevation changes, over 3 miles long. It’s the road that runs from the top left to bottom right in this picture:

There was light snow and some ice on the road. About halfway through we came over a hill around a curve and saw the checkpoint sign; I hit the brakes too hard and slid off the road, stuffing the car into a ditch up to the headlights! The snow was so deep, I couldn’t even open the door to get out.

Fortunately another competitor had a shovel in the car (it looked just like the one I left on my front porch). We started to dig the car out using the shovel, an ice scraper, and our hands! The sweep truck pulled up shortly, they were pretty close behind us. The driver wanted to turn the truck around so he wouldn’t have to tow in reverse — and in the process, almost drove into the same ditch! So we pushed the truck out, and then towed the car out. No major damage; just some plastic splash guards, and the fog lights had to be re-aimed. 25 minutes later, we finally left the checkpoint. Since the off happened after the timing line, we didn’t even have to take a time allowance.

We continued on, a bit timidly at first, but got back up to speed. Cassie started checking our leg scores and we were pretty consistently around 20 hundredths… that means that we were no more than 12 seconds early or late. Things were looking good.

Just before the break we missed a route instruction somehow, a misleading tulip and/or mileage being off by just a little bit may have been involved, or maybe we weren’t paying close enough attention. We kept going but things seemed wrong; when we tried to back up we couldn’t figure out how many steps back we were going.

If you click this image to enlarge it, you can see where we were on Smith Pond Road, turning onto Smith Pond Road…

We did get back on track, but with no idea of how much time we had lost. Cassie guessed 19:50 (the maximum time allowance) and since the next checkpoint was the last before the break we didn’t get our scorecard back.

Our assigned time to leave the break point passed when we were still four miles away. We took a few minutes anyway, and another time allowance. As far behind as we were, I KNEW we shouldn’t be seeing any other cars until the end of the night. So when we came over a crest and saw a line of cars at a checkpoint, I figured something was up — sure enough, we had a left turn just before that. One seven mile loop later, we turned back onto that road for our time. (They ended up tossing that entire leg, though, because the rallies aren’t supposed to be confusing — a lot of people missed the turn and went straight into the control.)

The rest of the night continued without incident. Towards the end, some of the legs were really long, Jim definitely fell asleep and Cassie was pretty close. Despite all the excitement we thought we still had fairly good scores. Somehow we caught up enough that we were only about 10 minutes behind the last car in the rest of the group.

Back at Cheap Charlie’s restaurant, we collected our stuff out of the car and went inside to find all the competitors and workers seated, calmly eating their dinners. So I did the only reasonable thing: threw the door open and held the snow shovel above my head. We weren’t expecting applause, but I guess people heard about our incident. Alan announced that if I wanted to keep my second place trophy from the January rally, I had to tell everyone what happened. (Happened? I just drove off the road… no big deal!)
Scores were posted and then recalculated. We finished first in class (out of 5 cars) with a score of 233. Wow!! 8th overall! I didn’t really think it would be that low. Even the last checkpoint before the break, after we got lost and stopped counting, we were only off by 28 hundredths!
So there you have it, our first victory in the winter series! Thanks to everyone who made the event happen!

Link to the results: http://www.flr-scca.com/rally/2007/WinterEvent3-Results.pdf
I leave you with a shot of the unavoidable dirt.

A bunch of the regulars showed up, plus a few new people. Eleven drivers competed in nine cars.

Nick and Jason recently decided not to abuse their nice Subarus, and picked up twin ‘97 Impreza Brighton coupes in green and teal. 1.8L engines, AWD, no options, dirt cheap. And matching stickers, of course.

My fastest time was a 1.85. I managed to screw up most of my runs by ending up in the snowbanks. The best part was the hairpin on the far side of the course, I was nailing it perfectly by the end of the day! We got a ton of runs in, including the “clear-the-snow-off-the-course” runs in the morning, and the fun runs at the end of the day.

With the exception of two cars, everyone went off course at some point. The tow straps got a workout! The only casualties on my Legacy were the fenderwell liner (again!) and front plate (which bent back into shape).

I only got photos of people on course during the parade laps and the fun runs. The shots at the end basically sum up the whole event.

Here’s a video from Nick’s roof camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGVkGCP4f4s

Link to the results: http://www.flr-scca.com/rally/2007/rallycross/021707.pdf

The competition included:

(not the Z4)

^^ that’s us.

Conditions were totally clear at the restaurant. At the drivers’ meeting, the rallymaster reminded us to stay safe, saying “you can’t win if you don’t finish.” There was snow on the ground, but a lot of the roads were clear. We all got stuck behind a huge plow on the way out to the actual starting point (indicated by a tree with a sign on it)

So we sit here and wait for our assigned time to leave. (check out my night vision)

Anyway, the way this works is, they tell us when to leave, where to go, and how fast we should be driving. The checkpoints are at unknown locations along the route; they know what time we should have arrived, we get points for being early or late, and the lowest score wins.

see . . . “checkpoints”

Early on, we went right into some twisty seasonal roads through the woods. It was hard to even keep up to speed. Snowmobiles were out, but there was not much other traffic. My car managed to pull the Slo Car (Cory’s 89 hatch) out of the ditch at the third checkpoint (it’s important to pull over, but more important to not pull over too much!)

As we headed further north and west, the weather got worse. The drivers were ducking behind the workers’ cars at the checkpoints, trying to stay out of the wind. Snow was blowing across the roads. My driving lights became useless. Visibility decreased dramatically. I should have taken a picture, but I didn’t . . .

We slowed to a crawl, just trying to stay in control. Cassie started to fill out our “time allowance” form. The sweep truck was nowhere in sight behind us. It had been miles and miles since the last checkpoint; we couldn’t see the street signs, and I wasn’t sure if we were really on course. At one point I wasn’t sure if we were really on a road . . . we weren’t. The 20 degree tilt of the car kinda gave it away. I got us out though.

Finally, near a farm somewhere between Batavia and Bergen, we came over a crest and discovered a virtual parking lot of rally cars. The checkpoint sign was there, but nobody would take the scorecard from me — for the first time that anyone could remember, they had decided to end the event early due to weather.

We took a group photo, got in line, and headed back to the restaurant, wagon train style. As we drove further south, the snow cleared — there was not a cloud in the sky over Piffard.

spot the rally cars . . .

Back inside, they decided not to score the event based on only six out of the twenty planned checkpoints, and instead rescheduled the event for sometime in 2008. You can’t win if you don’t finish . . but you won’t finish if you can’t see. We went to Denny’s and called it a night.

Of course coming back up to the city on 390, the snow found us once again. From the last checkpoint back to downtown, we saw no fewer than 20 cars off the side of the road.

Total rally time: an hour and ten minutes. Typical event: around six hours. Time until the next rally: three weeks. It was still fun.